


This Is the Run

by JoakDrysso



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Humor, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-01 23:39:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10203449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoakDrysso/pseuds/JoakDrysso
Summary: Ruby Rose discovered the boundaries of her new world early on. Then, she learned how to break them. Imagine how this looked to everyone else. [Set mid-season 1, twist on Gamer-style nonsense. Updated Saturdays.]





	1. Chapter the First

This Is the Run

A RWBY fanfic by

Joak Drysso

Disclaimer: Speedy speed boy, gasoline’s burning in, speedy speed boy, as fast as I can be

  
\---

  
Chapter the First: The (Reverse Bottle) Adventure Begins

  
Weiss Schnee knew, with her vow to be the best partner ever still relatively fresh, that she could sometimes miss things about her team, and particularly about Ruby, when she was focused on her schoolwork. It was something she was trying to improve on, to be able to read her teammates so that she could be there if they ever needed her, but the ideas of _reliability_ and _teamwork_ and _trust_ were still alien concepts she was trying to grasp.

  
So it came as a surprise to her that despite the flurry of activity surrounding midterms and how intensely she was studying to maintain her high marks, she noticed that Ruby always seemed to have cookies. Considering that the girl never seemed to have money, Weiss was very curious where the constant supply was coming from. Because Ruby didn’t eat cookies one at a time, she devoured them by the handful.

  
Weiss sometimes wondered if her semblance was actually just an insanely high metabolism and her speed was just a result of her never-ending sugar rush.

  
Still, as midterms crept up on them, Weiss kept seeing the cookies, and finally, she had enough and decided to ask Ruby about them, in a roundabout way.

“Ruby Rose, where on earth do you get all of those cookies?”

Or as bluntly as possible.

The other girl paused in the middle of an essay on combat theory – Ruby Rose’s Rules of Beating Beowulf Booty (A Working Title) – and looked at Weiss. For a moment, it seemed as though she didn’t quite understand the question, and then a bashful smile crossed her lips. She ran a hand through her hair, one of the few tells about her partner Weiss knew. This one meant ‘busted’. “Well, you see…”

“The truth, Ruby.” Weiss deadpanned. “I know that you don’t have the kind of lien to be burning on the amount of cookies you eat, and you haven’t asked me for any – not that I would fund such an unhealthy habit – and I know for certain that neither Blake nor Yang has much spare either. Where do you get them?”

The younger girl sighed. “Weiss, look, it’s not important, is it? You’re right, I’m not buying them, but…”

“It’s important if I want to cut you off.” Weiss responded, perhaps a bit more harshly than intended. She grimaced, and her tone softened. “Look, I know you like cookies, and I don’t think you have to stop eating them entirely but you have to start thinking a bit more nutritionally.”

Ruby flinched at Weiss’s appeal.

“But if you’re not buying them, that means you’re making them?” Weiss asked, to which Ruby nodded. “Still, the amount you eat, the cost for ingredients must be almost as much as buying them yourself.”

“Well, when you say _making_ them, it…might be a bit different than you think?”

Weiss raised a brow. “I don’t really know how much different it could possibly be. You bake them, don’t you?”

“Nnnnot really?” Ruby prevaricated. “I use,” she paused, her brow furrowing in concentration for a moment, “an alternative method.”

“That doesn’t really change the fact that you must be paying a fortune for ingredients. How are you getting the money?”

“Oh, I don’t pay anything for them!” Ruby explained cheerfully.

Weiss stopped. “Ruby Rose,” she scowled threateningly, “if you say you’re stealing them I will smack you.”

“What? No, no no no! I’m not stealing! Honest!” Ruby pouted at Weiss’ unimpressed look. “All right _fine_ ¸I’ll show you how I’m making the cookies, all right? But you’re not gonna get it.”

Weiss crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Ruby, I’ve seen a lot. You’re gonna have to work to surprise me.”

“Trust me, Weiss, you’ve never seen this.” Ruby reached under her desk and produced a jar full of cookies. “So here’s my basic cookie stash. I refresh it once every two weeks or so, keep them from going stale.”

“Okay.” Weiss frowned, looking at the jar. “I’m not really seeing where you’re going with this.”

“You’re about to see, but you won’t get it, believe me.” Ruby sighed. “All right, now watch carefully.” Ruby emptied the jar onto her desk, and Weiss grimaced at the crumbs going everywhere, but kept her eyes on Ruby’s actions. “And now the glitch.” She swiped with the jar, scooping up all of the cookies expertly…

And then Ruby was holding two jars. Both full of cookies.

Weiss blinked.

Nope, still there.

Her jaw dropped. “Wha…how… _what_?”

Ruby set her “basic cookie stash” under her desk, and then pulled out two cookies from the duplicate jar. One, she bit down on, holding it in her mouth, and the other she offered to Weiss.

Weiss stared at the cookie like it offended her. It sort of did. She didn’t know where that cookie had come from. But she was kind of hungry for a snack…

After a moment’s deliberation and a plaintive noise from Ruby, she took the damn cookie and took a bite. It tasted…perfectly normal. Ruby’s preferred brand (of course she knew that by now, how could she _not_?), though she’d opted for white chocolate macadamia instead of her traditional chocolate chip. “There’s so much wrong with what I just saw I don’t even know where to begin.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Weiss.” Ruby shrugs. “Once I figured it all out, I realized it wasn’t worth worrying about either.”

“But you created matter from nothing! You broke a fundamental law of the universe!”

“I, well, when you put it _that_ way.” Ruby looked chagrined. “It wasn’t anything so special though. I just…used the jar to rewrite memory.”

Weiss swore she felt something in her brain pop as she tried to process what was just said. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“The jar. I used it to rewrite memory so that instead of having one jar, I have two. As soon as the contents are recognized, I just kinda, you know, have two full jars of cookies instead of one.”

“What do you mean, ‘rewrite memory’?”

Ruby frowned. “That’s…a long and complicated discussion that I think would be better saved for another day.”

“Ruby,” Weiss growled.

Ruby paled and shot up out of her seat. “Oh hey what do you know we have class in thirty minutes I guess I better go don’t wanna be late bye.” She grabbed her gear and then…started walking into the corner of their bunk bed.

Weiss almost forgot her frustration in sheer confusion. “What are you trying to do? Do you think you can avoid me like that?”

Ruby seemed not to hear her, murmuring to herself, “Dammit, where is that angle, come on…there we are. See you in class Weiss!”

“Ruby you’re not going anywh-“ Weiss’s admonishment was interrupted as Ruby shot away from the bed like she’d been fired out of a cannon. Weiss screamed in worry, but as Ruby made contact with the wall, the weirdest thing happened.

She passed through it like it wasn’t even there.

The silence in the dorm room seemed deafening. Then, Weiss broke it by repeatedly hitting her head on the desk. “I must be crazy. They did it. They finally broke me down.”

\---

A/N: Gamer fics are all the same tired, repetitive garbage, so here’s something a bit different. Title and contents take inspiration from Ocarina of Time speedrunning technique Reverse Bottle Adventure, which involves rewriting inventory memory, as well as Bottle Duplication. The final bit is a common collision detection glitch, which can be seen in a number of games, particularly platformers. Super Mario 64 is a great example of collision detection weirdness.


	2. Chapter the Second

This Is the Run

A RWBY fanfic by

Joak Drysso

Disclaimer: I’ll be so quick as a flash, and I’ll be your hero

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Chapter the  Second: (Backwards) Leaps & (Out of) Bounds

Yang sometimes (by which she meant often, by which she meant every single night and most hours of the day) wondered what happened to Ruby in the time they hadn’t seen each other. Because her little sister, who had always been a little off but in a hideously cute way, had just become downright  _ weird _ .

Disregarding all of the talk Weiss had been brokenly mentioning about Ruby shattering her understanding of physics on so many levels, Ruby as of late had just been behaving oddly.

Take right now, for instance. She looked Ruby straight in the eye, which she really shouldn’t have been able to do, given that Team RWBY were on their way to class. “Are you sure you should be doing that? What if you hit someone?”

Ruby, who was moving backwards very lightly on her feet, simply smiled. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m perfectly capable of watching where I’m going. Besides, I can move slightly faster like thi-whoa!” And down went Ruby, having caught herself up in another student. “Aw geez. Sorry, uh…” Her eyes widened. “Pyrrha! Oh no I’m so sorry!”

Pyrrha Nikos grimaced as she stood up, rubbing her hip where Ruby had slammed into her full force, but shook her head. “No, no. No harm, no foul, right?”

Ruby laughed weakly. “I, uh, I guess so.”

Pyrrha smoothed out her skirt and then offered Ruby a hand, which the younger girl gladly took. Yang shook her head. “Told you you shouldn’t have been doing that, Rubes.”

Ruby crossed her arms and pouted. “I know what I’m doing Yang.” At Yang’s raised brow, she flushed slightly. “Look, it makes me move faster.”

“Huh?” Blake cut in. “How does going backwards made you move faster?”

“I don’t know, but it does! By moving backwards I can cut several seconds off of long travel distances! We’re talking like, at least one percent faster than walking forward!”

“That…that doesn’t make any sense Ruby.” Yang replied. “You could just…move faster walking forward.”

“I don’t know, Yang.” Weiss finally said. “I told you what she was doing when she broke reality for me, maybe this is just a part of that.”

Ruby nodded energetically, while Pyrrha blinked. “Er…broke reality?”

The look Weiss gave her could only be described as pure exhaustion. “You’ll see soon enough.”

Blake and Yang shared a look, and then turned to Ruby. “All right, seriously what is this about?” Yang started. “I’m not Weiss Cream’s biggest fan-“ “Hey!” “-but whatever you did seems to have traumatized her and the whole shell-shock thing only works for so long.”

“I told you what I did!” Ruby frowned. “I duplicated a jar of cookies.”

“I don’t know what that even means though!” Yang exclaimed. “For all I know, you just had a spare jar around and used some sleight of hand to make it look like it came out of nowhere!”

“I’m not a child, Yang, I can see through a magician’s tricks.” Weiss interjected in irritation.

Yang frowned. “I demand a demonstration. If you’ve got some cool power, it’s not fair that only your partner knows. What about your amazing big sister? How can you leave her out?”

Blake raised a brow. “And I don’t figure into this at all?”

“You’re my partner, we might as well be the same person!”

“Now  _ that _ is a terrifying prospect.” Blake said, her lips quirked up ever so slightly.

“Anyways, show us! Whatever you’re talking about, I wanna see!” Yang demanded, stomping her foot for effect.

Pyrrha hummed her agreement. “Whatever it was that has affected Weiss to this degree, it would be interesting to see.”

Ruby sighed. “All right,  _ fine _ .”

Yang cheered. “Now, show me this bottle duplication thingy!”

“It was a jar, and I can’t. I don’t have it on me.” The younger sister replied.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Um…” Ruby looked around, before she clapped her hands together. “I’ve got it! I’ll go out of bounds!”

“Out of bounds?” Blake asked before anyone else could. “What does that mean?”

“Well, see, right now we’re in Beacon, and specifically on the first floor. While the rest of the world  _ technically _ exists – of course it does, it would be silly if it didn’t – it’s not actually loaded.” Ruby started, completely ignoring the blank looks she was receiving.  “What out of bounds means is that I push myself into an unloaded area and that allows me to navigate around obstacles and either find a loading zone, or slide myself back inbounds.”

Dead silence met her explanation. Then Weiss started banging her head on the wall. “Um…W-Weiss?”

“Don’t mind me.” Thunk. “Just trying” thunk “to make the world” thunk “make sense again.” Thunk

“I didn’t get a word of that, sis.” Yang frowned. “I guess you’ll demonstrate?”

“Of course!” Ruby beamed. “And fortunately there’s a good corner right here!” She bounced over to the corner, and then turned to face the group. She took Crescent Rose out and then began wedging herself into the corner as tightly as possible.

“Um,” Blake started.

“This is, nngh, necessary, Blake!” Ruby cut her off. “Okay, I think I’m as in as I can go. So now we use a bit of acceleration to push me through the point where the polygons meet and…”

Weiss instinctively covered her ears, and the others clued in quickly and did the same right before Ruby pulled the trigger. Crescent Rose fired, blasting a chunk out of the opposite wall. The kick from the shot, however, pushed Ruby into the corner…and then she simply vanished.

“What.” Yang said when she realized her sister was nowhere to be seen.

“What.” Blake agreed, unable to wrap her head around what she’d just witnessed.

“What.” Pyrrha thirded, beginning to understand Weiss’s haunted look from just a few moments ago.

“I FUCKING TOLD YOU,” Weiss shrieked.

“Ruby?” Yang called out. “Rubes, where’d you go? C’mon sis.”

“Look out below!” Ruby called as she suddenly appeared overhead – materializing from some unseen tear in reality, it seemed like – and fell down on Weiss, who caught her and barely managed to stay on her feet. They looked at each other for a second before Weiss scoffed and dumped her to the ground. “Ow! That was mean.”

“That was just desserts.” Weiss returned. “That’s the third thing that you’ve done that is literally impossible, and I don’t know how much more of this I’ll be able to handle.”

Ruby flinched. “Look, I’ll uh, I’ll try to cut down on it somewhat.”

“That doesn’t sound promising, Ruby.” Yang frowned. “I’m kinda with Weiss, all of this stuff is really weird.”

“Look, I can’t help it! This is the world I live in!”

“Ruby, the world you live in is the world  _ we _ live in and I can’t do any of that stuff.” The blonde frowned.

Ruby grimaced. “I don’t know how to explain it, Yang. A few years back I woke up one day and things were like this. I just…work differently than everyone else does. I know what the limits of the world are, and I know how to break them.”

There was silence, before Blake of all people spoke up. “I think maybe we should just acknowledge that Ruby is going to break the world as we know it, and we just have to accept it as a thing. It’s the only way we’re going to make it out of this with any shred of sanity intact.”

Yang slowly nodded, but Weiss seemed almost resolute in her decision to simply be mad about Ruby’s casual disregard for the natural order of the universe. At least for a moment. Ruby gave her the most pitiful look in the world, and her sister winced, for she knew that look well. Nobody, not even Summer Rose, could resist Ruby’s Pout. Though to her credit, the Schnee heiress held out for a good five seconds before she caved and agreed to at least try and stop making sense of the madness and just accept it.

Pyrrha though… “I can’t really understand how you’re all being that casual about it. I think I’m going to go back to my team, now, and pretend that this was all a fever dream.” She drummed her fingers on her hip for a moment. “Yes, I believe that is exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to start repressing this memory right… _ now _ .” She walked off.

“Now would someone like to explain this?” A cold, authoritarian voice surprised RWBY, who all jumped in fright, and then turned around, dread in their expressions. Glynda Goodwitch stood there, switch in her hand, looking remarkably composed considering she stood next to a rather sizeable hole in the wall.

Yang immediately pointed at Ruby, as did Weiss and Blake. “She did it.”

Ruby opened her mouth to complain, but Yang shot her  _ a look _ . This was her punishment for shooting the wall, and also causing her team an unheard of level of mental duress. Eventually, Ruby shut her mouth and nodded. “Yes, Miss Goodwitch, that was me.”

Glynda stared at the team for a moment, and then nodded. “Very well. You’ll be patching it up, and then I think we’ll have a few words about gun safety.”

Ruby groaned in misery.

The sound was music to her team’s ears.

\---

A/N: This chapter owes some of its concept to Ocarina again, specifically the backwards movement bit. (I couldn’t think of how to work a superslide into the story.) The out-of-bounds stuff is a common glitch, not just in Ocarina, but a variety of games.


	3. Chapter the Third

This Is the Run

A RWBY fanfic by

Joak Drysso

Disclaimer: I was born to be a legend, dreamin’ of the seventh heaven, pretty baby I was born to fly

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Chapter the Third: Missingrimm

“Ruby,” Blake grumbled, “We’ve been out here all day and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of this Grimm you’re looking for. Can we call it a rest?”

Blake was not a happy faunus. It was uncomfortably warm and she’d been outside all day at the behest of her team leader, she was drenched in sweat and stank. She was, ultimately, a grumpy cat.

Not that her two other companions were in much better shape. Weiss at least had avoided the sweating issue by  _ cheating _ – that is, using her glyphs skillfully to provide her with a much more moderate temperature, but she looked just as exhausted as Blake felt. And Yang…Yang seemed like she was moments away from murdering Ruby. Her hair, the hair she took such pride in, was alternately matted by sweat, messed up by foliage, or, and Blake would not be the one to risk setting Yang off by saying it,  _ containing _ foliage.

Ruby turned back to them. “But I know I did everything right! I don’t know why it’s not showing up!”

“Ruby, Grimm aren’t a part of your…whatever thing.” Weiss groaned. “Just because you can do some weird impossible things…”

“But that’s it! I studied everything! I talked to the old man at the book store, which sets up a variable that alters the encounter table  _ here _ and I followed the step count exactly! Even taking into account imperfect DSum manipulation, we should have had an encounter with this dumb thing five times by now!” Her complaints were meet with blank, unappreciating, unamused stares. “What I mean is, just bear with me a little longer. Have we been making notches to check our progress?”

“Ruby if we’re out here much longer we’re going to have notched these trees to the point that they just fall over.” Blake replied. “We’ll do two more laps and then we’re done.”

“But-“ Ruby started, but a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. Slowly, she turned to see Yang’s murderous expression, and her own face paled considerably. “All right,” she squeaked, “two laps.”

Yang released her shoulder and pushed her forward. The suddenly mouselike girl stumbled along the path uncertainly before finding her footing. However, as she took a step, a rustling in the bushes alerted all of them. “No way,” Blake murmured to herself, “there’s  _ no way- _ “

Out of the bushes came the oddest-looking Grimm she had ever seen. While its body was the same general ink-black and bone-white with piercing red eyes, the  _ structure _ of that body was…

“It’s a floating lowercase D,” Yang deadpanned as she looked at it. “What even  _ is _ this?”

“This is what I was looking for!” Ruby cheered excitedly. “It’s a special Grimm with a unique encounter number that can only be found by walking along a narrow section of this forest. It’s…kind of hard to explain, but think of it as a Grimm with an unassigned value that appears if the data for an encounter gets all screwed up.” Dead silence. Ruby sighed and pressed her face into her hand. “Special Grimm, kill it please.”

Yang cracked her knuckles, and glyphs spun into existence beneath Weiss’s feet. Blake herself stepped forward, drawing Gambol Shroud from its sheathe and then flipping the sheathe around to act as her second weapon. “Gladly, if it means we can get out of here.”

And with that, RWBY went to battle. The Grimm didn’t put up much real resistance. Ruby’s scythework lead the Grimm to large openings in balance that Weiss exploited with Myrtenaster. Yang drew its attention away from their princess with a few well-placed punch-blasts from Ember Celica, allowing Blake to slide in and skewer it with her weapons. Still, the creature didn’t seem ready to die…but it also wasn’t doing much of anything.

RWBY though, never gave it any chance to recover, keeping up a furious four-sided assault that showed the extent of their inherent teamwork and coordination. And eventually, they managed to push it against a solid wall, at which point everyone simply unloaded their guns into the beast. It shuddered as ammunition of all types and purposes slammed into it. With a cry that left absolutely no echo, it collapsed, and then dissolved into a viscuous black liquid.

“Okay.” Blake said slowly, catching her breath. “We found your Grimm, we killed it, now what?”

Ruby tapped her chin with a finger. “I don’t know… _ exactly _ ?” Yang’s hands flexed. “I mean that I don’t know how much of everything it gives, but it’s supposed to make copies.”

“Copies of what?” Weiss asked.

“Equipment? Or items. It’s all based on slots and…um, anyone else feel something weird?”

Yang nodded, looking at her body. “Yeah, something is really weird and…oh my god, Blake, your pants!”

While her partner decided to laugh rather than be helpful, Blake looked down, and then blinked when she saw an odd inflation on the outside of her right leg. She had a moment to be alarmed, she quickly noticed that similar things were happening to her teammates. “Ruby!” She yelled. “What did you do?!”

“I just needed a bunch of parts so I could upgrade Crescent Rose, I have some great ideas!” Ruby replied, watching as her pack, which she had set down on the ground, started to inflate as well. “So I looked for a way to mass duplicate a bunch of things, and found out about this Grimm.”

“Ruby Rose, I swear if we survive this I will kill you.” Weiss threatened.

“It should be fine?” Ruby offered weakly.

Any further conversation was interrupted by the sound of tearing fabric, and the unmistakable heavy thud of metal falling to the ground. Blake looked down and found that her pocket had torn open and  Gambol Shroud had fallen to the ground. And then she looked at her left hand, which carried Gambol Shroud in it. “Wha-“

And then all hell broke loose. A veritable tide of metal erupted from her pocket, from Ruby’s pack, and from the sounds of it, Yang and Weiss were dealing with their own leaks too. Blake watched, dumbfounded, as copies of Gambol Shroud spelled onto the ground. It was slightly alarming when the pile began to surround her, but she was too shocked to care until she was quite nearly buried by copies of her own weapon. She managed to escape before the giant mess collapsed in, her pocket still disgorging Gambol Shrouds. After a few minutes, the tide ebbed, then stopped entirely.

The faunus took a look around the clearing. She had her own pile, Weiss seemed to be trying to dig herself out of a collapsed pile of Myrtenasters, Yang was sitting flummoxed in the middle of her pile of Ember Celicas, and Ruby…

Ruby couldn’t have looked happier if she tried. “Oh Crescent Rose, my beautiful baby, you have so many siblings now!” She paused, then frowned. “I suppose that analogy falls apart when I consider that I’m taking them all apart for spare parts and modifications, huh? Nevermind that!”

“Ruby, I’m going to regret asking this,” Blake put her fingers on her temples, “but  _ how _ .”

“Mmm, it’s kind of hard to explain all of it exactly, but basically by defeating the Missingrimm, equipment or items in a specific slot get duplicated and a hundred and twenty eight copies of it are added – because it’s a 16-bit tracking system, you understand?”

“I regret,” Blake said. “I regret so much. So you’re saying we have a hundred and twenty eight copies of everything here? We have five hundred and twelve pieces of equipment we have to haul back?”

“I vote Ruby does the hauling.” Yang said from the side.

“Seconded.” Weiss spoke quickly. Ruby gave her a betrayed look, but Weiss’s return glare carried a lack of amusement that seemed to kill the fight inside the leader.

“I…fine. Fine, I’ll carry it all.” Ruby grumbled. “You’re killing all of the buzz of this. I can do so many crazy things, you don’t even understand. Crescent Rose will become the ultimate weapon!”

“Crescent Rose can be whatever it wants to be,” Yang snapped, “I just want a shower, Ruby!”

That seemed to snap Ruby out of whatever shell she was in pretty much the entire time, and she looked at her companions and their varying states of “total mess”. And then she noticed that she herself wasn’t exactly in the freshest of conditions. “…all right, we’ll go back and leave this here for now. I doubt anyone’s going to come this way for a few days.”

Ruby got up, and so did her teammates, to begin the walk back to Beacon.

Blake was content with the silence, her team’s exhaustion and dreary mood were palpable.

“I’m glad we found the Grimm though! Seriously you won’t  _ believe _ what I’m going to do with that thing!”

Palpable, but ignorable, apparently, if your name was Ruby Rose.

\---

A/N: This chapter’s biggest and most obvious reference is the Missingno glitch from first generation Pokemon (specifically Blue and Red, if memory serves). That aside, there’s also a reference to DSum manipulation for Pokemon speedrunning (essential for 151 speedruns) in Ruby talking about encounter tables and RNG variance, as well as RPG (and in particular Final Fantasy) speedrunning when mentioning the step count.


	4. Chapter the Fourth

This Is the Run

A RWBY fanfic by

Joak Drysso

Disclaimer: Futureland, all history is just a dream, a fire burnin’ so high

\---

Chapter the Fourth: Boulevard of Broken Sequences

It wasn’t often that all of Team RWBY was in the exact same place at the exact same time, largely because everyone had their own schedules and disparate interests that led them to different parts of Beacon after classes. Aside from team practice and the occasional Weiss-enforced study group, if they got together it was usually because Ruby wanted to do something. And Ruby had told all of them to get together shortly after the last class of the day, because she had something to reveal.

Weiss tapped her foot impatiently, a frown on her lips. It was already three minutes past the time Ruby had set, and the small pit of dread in her stomach was forcing her perception of time to slow down immensely. She spared a look at Blake and Yang. Blake read one of her books, only glancing up at the clock every fifteen (torturous) seconds or so. Yang looked about the same as her though, her arms crossed and fingers drumming on bare skin.

“I give her two more minutes and I’m leaving.” Weiss grumbled.

As if summoned by her complaint, Ruby burst into the door. “Hello Team RWBY!” She greeted cheerfully. “Are you ready to  _ save the world _ ?”

Nobody else shared her particular cheer, which killed her mood a bit. In a more subdued manner, she continued. “Look, it’s been about…three months since that Grimm incident, yeah?” Everyone nodded. “So in that time, I’ve been tinkering with Crescent Rose.” Again, nods. Nobody had missed her already enormous scythe  _ growing _ in size and somehow becoming even wickeder. Even JNPR, normally steadfast partners in combat training, had started shying away from them, to say nothing of the other freshmen teams. “Well, I’ve done it! I finally beat the system.”

Those were words they never wanted to hear. Whenever Ruby talked about the ‘system’, it meant bad things were coming. And yet, despite herself, Weiss had to ask.

“What do you mean?” She studiously ignored the glares Blake and Yang sent her way.

She regretted asking immediately when Ruby opened her mouth and  _ audibly inhaled. _ ”Well, you see, damage calculations occur in a 32-bit signed integer, which means that there’s a threshold of about two point one five billion damage, but if you manage to pass that, it wraps around and becomes a  _ negative _ value, and negative damage causes the system to go funky and assume that the enemy is dead.”

Blake was opening her mouth when Ruby interrupted with the short version. “More or less, I hit someone so hard they heal for negative damage and die.”

Weiss swore that Yang went cross-eyed.

“Ruby, that’s, um, great,” Weiss tried, “but doesn’t that mean that sparring with  _ us _ will…you know, kill us?”

“Oh, no worries, I kept one of the spare Crescent Roses!” Ruby said cheerfully. Weiss sighed in relief. “But anyways, the reason this is important is I know how we can save the world!”

“How?” Blake asked reflexively, and then cringed.

“We beat the big bad evil guy!” Ruby responded.

Aside from the absurdity of there being a ‘big bad evil guy’…that was probably the cleanest explanation they could have hoped for.

Yang pinched her nose. “That’s fine and all, Rubes, but there’s one big problem with that. Namely, we don’t know who the big bad evil guy is or where they are.”

“Oh no, that’s all taken care of.” Ruby replied offhandedly, too busy rooting through her desk. “I was looking through the code earlier and found references to a class called ‘Mysterious Narrator’ that I was able to trace to another class called ‘Salem’. So that’s our big bad. As for where they are…”

“Please don’t.” Blake pleaded.

“Oh it’s not that bad! Basically I found the assigned variable for entering the door to her boss lair and was looking for ways to hack it and I did! So we can actually just…go to her right now and save the world without all of the muss and fuss. Isn’t that great?”

“Sure, sis.” Yang sighed, feeling far older than her seventeen years. “But why do you even need us if Crescent Rose is as powerful as you say?”

“Why?!” Ruby looked offended. “We’re Team RWBY! It’d be pointless for me to do it by myself!”

“Even if we’re just there while you do everything yourself?” Blake asked, a slight smile tugging at her lips.

“Exactly!” She looked at the three of them. “Look I just want to do this as a team. Pleeeease can we go kill the big bad evil guy?”

That sentence set off so many alarm bells in Weiss’s head that she didn’t know where to start, and from the looks of it Yang was having issues with it too. Eventually though, she gave in, just seconds before the Ruby Pout returned. “All right fine, let’s go…save the world or whatever.”

“Hooray! Let’s go, Best Team Ever!” And thus, Ruby hauled Weiss out of the room, with Blake and Yang following at a more sedate pace. She led them into Beacon proper, Weiss’s long-suffering expression drawing more than a few curious looks. Eventually they made their way to Professor Port’s classroom, and stopped outside. “Okay, so everyone else needs to go in, because once I enter and shut the door, I’ve got to be pretty frame-perfect to get this.”

Weiss and the others didn’t even bother asking, they just walked inside. Surprisingly, Port had not yet left, and looked up at the entering RWBY with mild surprise. “Well, well, if it isn’t Team RWBY. Did you need something from me?”

It was perhaps the rudest thing she’d ever done to a professor, but Weiss didn’t have the energy to muster to explain it, so she simply pointed to her teammate as Ruby shut the door.

Fortunately, Blake was there to pick up the slack. “Ruby says that she knows how to get to the big bad evil guy’s lair from here.”

“I…see…” Port clearly didn’t. Weiss didn’t blame him, because she sure as hell didn’t see it either, but she knew better than to call Ruby’s bluff, lest something ludicrous happen again.

Ruby produced a bottle. Weiss twitched at seeing a few bugs inside, and her twitching got even worse when Ruby overturned the bottle and dumped them onto the floor. Port’s indignant cry was completely ignored as Ruby instantly snatched the insects in her bottle, and then began an elaborate series of sidehops, backflips, and forward rolls.

“Is…is Miss Rose quite alright?” Port finally asked, having come over to join the other three as they watched their leader engage in bizarre gymnastics.

“I’ve been asking myself that for months, Professor.” Yang said honestly. Blake and Weiss nodded.

“But,” Blake cut in before Weiss could get started, “as…bizarre as her antics are, usually she’s on the money. For whatever value of money there is in this situation.”

“So this…big bad evil guy? Do they have a name?” Port inquired.

“Salem, I think is what Ruby said?” Weiss mentioned, her eyes still following Ruby.

“Salem…” Port said, and there was an oddly stiff note in his tone that Weiss would have cared more about had Ruby not rolled to a stop in front of the door.

“Next stop, boss lair!” Ruby cheered, and opened the door.

“My word!” Port exclaimed. The door had opened, but certainly not to the Beacon hallway it was supposed to. Instead it opened to a gloomy lair, where five figures sat in conversation. At least, they had, until Port’s exclamation drew their attention.

“Booyah!” Ruby cheered. “I  _ told you  _ this is where the big bad evil guy was!”

“HOW EVEN?” Weiss screamed.

Port squinted, trying to adjust his eyes to the light, and then his eyes widened with alarm. “Salem! Good heavens, girls get behind me!” He pulled up his blunderbuss, but Ruby simply unhooked Crescent Rose and unfurled it. Her upgraded Crescent Rose (nicknamed Crescent Rose Ne Plus Ultra) extended, now a bulky, absolutely monstrous looking scythe. Weiss wasn’t sure how she got the blade to light on fire, but she wasn’t really going to question it in the moment.

“Don’t worry, Professor,” Ruby smiled, “I got this.”

“I do not know who you are,” Salem called from the far end, “but I can very much assure you that you have not ‘got this’. Tyrian.”

“With pleasure, my queen!” The pony-tailed man arose from his chair, and then charged to meet Ruby in battle.

As soon as Crescent Rose made contact, he simply…faded out of existence.

Everyone stopped. Finally, someone broke the silence, but it wasn’t anyone from RWBY.

“What.” Salem said.

“So that’s what buffer overflow looks like.” Ruby said thoughtfully. Then she proceeded to charge. Arthur and Hazel vanished similarly. Cinder stood opposite her with a scowl, and Ruby gave her a thoughtful look. “You’re not a nice person.”

“I’m  _ evil _ ,” Cinder replied, somewhat taken aback.

“I know. I just wanted you to know that I don’t think you’re nice.”

“O-ka-“ Her reply was cut off as Ruby caught her with Crescent Rose and she vanished.

“What are you? How are you  _ doing _ this?” Salem demanded, edging away from Ruby.

“Oh, it’s a long and technical explanation.” Ruby said. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

“And we were?” Yang murmured, causing Blake and Weiss to snicker.

“All that matters now is that Tema RWBY has saved the world and we’re the best!”

“I don’t know what trick you’re using, but you won’t defeat m-“ And Salem vanished.

Ruby walked back to a still-snickering team, as well as a stunned Port. “All done. World is saved. Go RWBY!”

“Yes, go RWBY.” Weiss deadpanned. “Now can we go back? This place is dreadful.”

“Of course it is, it’s a final boss lair! It wouldn’t be much of one if it was a  _ nice _ place, would it?”

Weiss’s shoulders slumped. “I suppose not.”

“Girls,” Port said slowly. “I don’t really understand what just happened here.”

“Well,” Ruby opened her mouth, but Weiss, Blake,  _ and _ Yang clamped their hands over it before she could start.

“Don’t ask, Professor.” Weiss said. “It’s just…better that way. Knowing will keep you awake at night.”

Port looked at his students, and saw the haunted looks in the eyes of everyone but Ruby.

He sighed. “I suppose that’s for the best. Can you, uh, get us back?” He asked Ruby, who nodded. “Excellent. Then I suggest you get to that. Miss Schnee, Miss Xiao Long, Miss Belladonna, come with me?”

He turned and walked to his desk, the other three girls following while Ruby began her routine all over again. “I have known Ozpin for quite some time, and I have seen quite a few things I probably never should have.” He reached down, and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid, and four glasses. “This is the best way I have of getting past that kind of thing.”

Weiss looked at the liquid thirstily. Whatever Port was expecting, he probably was not expecting the three girls to, in unison, reach out, grab a glass of whisky, and down it without flinching.

“Please tell me there’s more where that came from.” Yang begged.

\---

A/N: Today’s glitches are sequence-breaking (via wrong warping) and buffer overflow. Sequence-breaking is a very common glitch that is abused in just about every speedrun capable of it for various reasons. This version of buffer overflow comes specifically from Final Fantasy 7, which works similarly to, if a bit more technically than, the way Ruby described it here. There are Battle Mechanics FAQs for anyone who wants to investigate more.


	5. Chapter the Fifth

This Is the Run

A RWBY fanfic by

Joak Drysso

Disclaimer: Can you feel my heart pounding, pounding

\---

Chapter the Fifth: (Sword) Flying in the Sky

“Hey there, beautiful.”

Weiss stopped cold in the middle of writing her paper. The voice said Ruby, but the tone said Jaune. Either Ruby was up to something, or Jaune had found out her secret and gone to extreme lengths to get her attention.

She was going to be drunk or a murderer within the hour.

Slowly, very slowly, she turned around. When she saw Ruby, she didn’t know whether to sigh in relief or feel even more apprehensive. Instead, she quashed the feelings down the way she always had back at home, and put on her best ‘this had better be good’ face. “What is it, Ruby?”

Her partner’s expression faltered a bit, but then firmed up in determination. Ruby smoothed it over with a genial smile and strutted ( _ strutted! _ ) over to the door. She turned to face Weiss, and something in her expression made the heiress’ heartbeat quicken. “You’ve been working on that paper almost all day. Why don’t you take a break?” Ruby extended her forearm to rest it on the doorsill. “I’ve got something you’re gonna wanna see-”

And she missed her perch entirely, collapsing to the ground and bumping her head rather roughly on that same doorsill. “Ruby!” Weiss shot out of her chair in alarm, and crossed the room to where her partner was groaning and clutching her head.

“Ow,” Ruby moaned pitifully. Weiss frowned and knelt down beside her.

“Let me see, Ruby.” She moved her partner’s hand. There was some swelling, but she let out a sigh of relief when she saw no bleeding. “Okay, I think you’re gonna be fine without a trip to the doctor’s office. We’ll get some ice on it.” She gave Ruby a curious look. “Now what was that all about?”

Ruby frowned and mumbled something, but Weiss didn’t catch any of it. When Ruby saw the look Weiss was giving her, she sighed. “I was trying to be smooth.”

“Smooth?” She tilted her head. “Why?”

Ruby flushed, and this in turn sparked Weiss’s own spike in temperature. “I just…I wanted to sound cool while inviting you out. I don’t know what you go for.”

_ I go for dorks who talk about things that make no sense to anyone but them _ , Weiss said silently, but sighed. “Ruby, you could just invite me like normal, you know?”

“But this is so cool! I found something that I think you’d really appreciate and I wanted to share it and make it a special thing! I couldn’t just be  _ normal _ .”

“Something I’d really appreciate?” Weiss pondered. “Wait, wait.” Her eyes narrowed. “Does this have to do with-“

“Well,  _ yes _ but it’s not really like the other stuff I’ve done.” She paused. “Well, more or less.”

“I don’t know,” Weiss prevaricated.

“ _ Please _ ,” Ruby turned on the full power of her wide eyes.

Weiss held out for approximately one nanosecond before her insides converted to mush.  _ Oh my god why is she this cute? _ “Fine,” she spoke, trying to preserve her dignity by making it sound as though it was a chore, “I’ll go see whatever this is.” Inside, her hormones were throwing a rave while her heart dropped the bass like a Lil’ Jon party anthem.

“Yay!” Ruby shot up, her headbump seemingly forgotten. She grabbed Weiss’s hand and hauled the girl along, conspicuously grabbing Crescent Rose Ne Plus Ultra on the way out.

“Do we really need…that?” Weiss said. All of RWBY were terribly apprehensive of the mammoth weapon after Ruby’s brief world-saving rampage, and the rest of the school even moreso after Ruby mistakenly grabbed the wrong Crescent Rose while rushing to class after oversleeping.

“I mean, technically no, but this makes it more of a sure thing.” Ruby replied. “Trust me, it’s worth it, and it won’t be pointed at you at any point in time.”

Weiss frowned but eventually nodded.

The sun was setting, dying the sky a stunning myriad of oranges, yellows, blues, and purples. Weiss’s breath hitched for a moment. She had never really taken much time to look at sunsets and sunrises, and in this moment she regretted that she so often overlooked that beauty.

With Ruby transposed on top, it was a scene she made absolutely certain to commit to memory. Because she knew that any moment now, Ruby was going to ruin i-

“All right, now let’s get this show on the road!” Ruby cheered.

Weiss sighed. There it was.

“Now to get this started I kinda need…” Ruby paused, and her cheeks pinked again. “I kinda need you to hold onto me. Like, real tight.”

Weiss colored slightly herself. “Um. Why?”

“We…we might be going real fast soon?” Ruby offered.

Those were words Weiss dreaded to hear. Yang had taken her to ride on her beloved motorcycle exactly  _ one _ time, and that had been more than enough for Weiss to never want to go anywhere near ‘fast’ again.

But Ruby’s look was so earnest that Weiss couldn’t really find it in herself to turn her down. She sighed, and moved in close to Ruby. For a moment, she stood stock still.

Physical affection was not something she was used to giving or receiving. It wasn’t so much that she was afraid to be near someone so much as she was unused to it, uncertain, and that uncertainty compounded itself mercilessly. With Yang, she had simply followed directions, but with Ruby, the emotions she felt and her fear of them becoming known were locking her up.

It wasn’t helped much when Ruby actually backed right up into her personal space bubble. Her nervous system went haywire when she realized that Ruby’s delectable behind was mere inches away from her. She had to fight to keep from chewing on her lip. Ruby gave her a look over her shoulder. “You gonna grab on?”

Robotically, Weiss managed to finally close her arms around Ruby’s waist. With plenty of leeway.

Ruby groaned. “Weiss, c’mon. That isn’t gonna hold. I’d just shoot out of your arms.”

Of course, Weiss thought. That would be tragic. She prayed that the material she was wearing was thick enough. She put strength into her arms and pulled Ruby to her and for a moment she completely lost sight of everything but the girl in her arms. Was that a different shampoo? She sniffed again. Wait, was that  _ her _ shampoo? How did Ruby manage to make it smell better than she ever had?

She had to distract herself. “So what exactly are you doing?”

Oh god, she’d asked possibly the worst question she could have.

“Well,” Ruby said as she hefted Crescent Rose Ne Plus Ultra in its sniper mode (“More of a battleship cannon at this point”, she had once said) and looked off into the distance through the sight, “it’s like this. One of the possible attack animations I have with Crescent Rose is a lunge toward an enemy.”

“Attack animation?” Oh no why could she not stop asking.

“It’s…nevermind, it’s a bit hard to explain.” Ruby sighed. “Anyways, it only works when I have an enemy  _ targeted _ . But there’s a funny characteristic to the way targeting works. As long as the reticle is red, I have a target – and if I swap fast enough and animate, then I’m still  _ targeting _ even though the actual target is out of range.”

Weiss sighed and resigned herself. “Okay, so?”

“So, I set up a spawn point for a Nevermore about a mile out…and there it is.”

“A Nevermore? Ruby, did you really bring me out here to go Grimm hunting?” Weiss felt her brow twinge in irritation.

“No! I just needed one to set this up. I hope you’re holding on tight.” Weiss squeezed her arms once, trying to ignore how  _ nice _ that felt. “Good girl. Here we go!”

Ruby triggered Crescent Rose’s transformation, and leapt forward, dragging along a startled Weiss – and then they tore off in the direction Ruby had been aiming at, at rather alarming speeds.

Weiss screamed and clung to her partner for dear life. Ruby simply cheered at her success. A few seconds later Ruby took care of the Nevermore she’d used to set up the trick, and the two were now flying through the sky. After the initial rush, Weiss had managed to calm down and open her eyes to take in the sight.

And what a sight it was.

They had broken through the cloud cover, and Weiss was treated to an unrestricted view of the sunset and the massive night sky. Her jaw dropped, which was a mistake moving at the speed they were as it took her a few moments to shut it and catch her breath. She set her chin on Ruby’s shoulder and yelled, “This is incredible!”

She could  _ feel _ Ruby’s smile and satisfaction. “See?” She yelled in response. “I told you this was worth it!”

“It is, but if you start singing cartoon movie songs I will hit you.” She said, and Ruby laughed in response.

For several minutes they coasted, with gravity having finally caught up and beginning to pull them back down through the clouds.

And then Weiss looked down and noticed something.

The shoreline was rapidly approaching.

“Ruby, um, where were we supposed to land?”

The fact that Ruby looked down instead of answering her immediately gave her her answer, but Ruby went and said it anyways. “You know, I don’t know?”

“Oh great, we’re going to die in the ocean.” Weiss sighed.

“Nah, we’ll be fine. I’ve got a move to cancel momentum.” Ruby said offhand.

“Oh.” That was about all Weiss could offer. Ruby could break physics in yet another way. At this point, she was starting to build an immunity to it.

“So, maybe this would be a bad time to ask a question?”

Weiss shrugged, and then realized Ruby probably couldn’t tell that. “Go for it.”

“Um…” She started. The shore flashed by underneath them and they were now over water. “This…this might be easier if I turn around?”

Weiss blinked. “That…how?”

“Just…hold my hand, I think?” Ruby shrugged. Weiss loosened her grip and for an unnerving moment the comforting weight of Ruby in her arms vanished as the girl twisted herself to orient back around. Then she closed back in and wow Ruby was  _ right there _ and if she moved her face maybe an inch she’d be kissing her.

Weiss blinked once and then flushed a deep red. “Uh. Hi.”

“Hi.” Ruby replied bashfully. “So I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I wanted to know…wouldyoumaybewanttogooutwithme?”

Weiss took a moment to process her hurried words. And then she smiled and opened her mouth to respond.

And then they plowed into the water.

Weiss felt very shaken as she surfaced. Nothing seemed broken, but she had a feeling she would be very, very sore for the next few days.  _ Thank the creator for aura, or that actually probably  _ would _ have killed us. _

Ruby surfaced shortly thereafter, sputtering. “Owww.”

“That’s what you get, dolt.” Weiss splashed her with water. “It’s going to take us forever to get back to Beacon now.”

“I’ll think of something.” Ruby replied.

“Please don’t,” Weiss begged. And then a moment later, she sighed. “You know, Ruby, your timing sucks. But yes.”

Weiss got front-row seats to an epiphany happening. It started with her eyes, as all things did with Ruby. Understanding washed over, and then a second later, pure happiness. Her face slowly relaxed, even as tears continued to threaten to spill.

“Now let’s get out of the water before either of us catches a cold.” Weiss sighed. “It should only be a good hour of swimming to get back to shore.”

“I could superswim…” Ruby offered, but quailed at the look Weiss gave her.

“I refuse to trust anything you name that has  _ super _ in the title.” She scowled. “Now let’s get going. If you’re lucky, I won’t refuse you hand-holding privileges on the way back.”

“Weiss, no! Hand-holding is a right for girlfriends! It’s in the constitution!” Ruby pouted.

Weiss turned an amused look on her. “When you decided to date a Schnee, you opted into a dictatorship.”

Ruby looked at her, and after a moment, grinned. “Worth it.”

\---

A/N: This ended up being an eleventh-hour rewrite after I finally got so fed up with my uncertainty and distaste over the original chapter 5. I may post it up as a bonus chapter after this is all done but I was ultimately not happy with the tone and direction, so I rewrote this.

The glitch at play here is the Halo 2 Sword Fly glitch, wherein you sight on an enemy with a ranged weapon, then switch and swing with the energy sword on the first frame, causing the game to freak out and think that you’re doing the sword charge from whatever distance, causing you to quite literally go flying over vast distances.

Ruby also references superswim, a speedrunning technique from The Wind Waker.

This was also probably subliminally inspired by momoxtoshiro’s A Walk Through the Clouds, which I remembered halfway through writing this. You should probably go read that, it’s pretty cute.


	6. Chapter the Last

This Is the Run

A RWBY fanfic by

Joak Drysso

Disclaimer: Welcome back baby to the disco fire

\---

Chapter the Last: (Wrong Warp to) The End

Weiss never particularly felt like the last year had been a big step for her. Looking at other members of their cohort, particularly JNPR, you’d have thought that they’d been locked in prison for three years and finally granted pardon in their fourth. It was the way of things, as she understood it, that the first three years were nose to the grindstone, and the fourth was rager central.

As far as she was concerned, the other teams were late to the party, because RWBY (with the exception of its namesake and youngest member) had been having ragers ever since Professor Port gave them tacit approval to have alcohol on hand to deal with Ruby. They called it a team-building exercise, and once Ozpin had spoken to Port, he also gave his tacit approval, in the form of a bottle of Mistral’s finest whisky and a card that simply read “My deepest sympathies”.

Between Weiss’ relationship with Ruby and Yang’s general appreciation of alcohol, that bottle hadn’t lasted a week. Weiss was more than able to keep a steady supply of drink in their room, though she sometimes wondered what her father would say about the fact that the Schnee fortune was funding three burgeoning cases of functional alcoholism.

Fortunately for everyone involved, whether it was the constant exposure or Ruby consciously holding back, it became easier to handle the sheer weirdness that surrounded the girl. RWBY, as a team, became known as the Odd Ones, an appellation they couldn’t really argue with, but they were also the single most effective team in Beacon. Not that that had been hard once Ruby had discovered how to, in her own words, “hack their parameters and boost them sky-high”.

No, all in all, fourth year at Beacon was much the same as it ever was, which included her being the only person in their dorm room doing one last revision on her final paper. The others, having decided enough was enough, had all wandered out to the cafeteria after Ruby had dragged a promise out of Weiss that she’d be along when she was done.

One last scan caught nothing out of place, aside from the notes she’d already made for final tweaks, and she set the paper down and leaned back in the seat, stretching. A nice, relaxing dinner with her girlfriend and her team sounded great.

So of course, something happened to cause all of her plans to go awry.

The door of the dorm room flew open. Weiss started, and then rolled her eyes, turning, an admonishment already on her lips. “Ruby, how many times do I have to tel-“ And then all pretense of thought died.

Standing in the doorway was Ruby Rose, but it was not  _ her _ Ruby Rose.  _ Her _ Ruby Rose did not have the sheer grace that this woman exuded, and  _ her _ Ruby Rose sure as hell was not carrying around a girl who looked for all intents and purposes like a Schnee, but for her silver eyes.

“What.” Weiss was, if nothing, as articulate as ever.

“See, Ariana, I told you, sweetheart, you just have to hit the right frame and-oh, hey Weiss!” Ruby smiled.

“What.” Weiss repeated as her brain struggled to reboot. Processes were preventing shutdown from occurring.

“Man, this is so nostalgic. I have a lot of great memories of this place.” Ruby swept into the room. “I’m sure you’re surprised to see us. I just thought, you know, it might be nice to show Ariana what her mommy was like when she was younger.”

Weiss managed to raise a shaky hand and point in the direction of the cafeteria.

Ruby blinked and followed her finger, looking at the wall, before she made the connection. “Oh, no, Weiss, sweety. I’m Ariana’s mom.” She placed the young girl down, who eagerly skipped over to Weiss.

“Mommy!” The young girl chirped excitedly.

“ _ What _ .”

\---

Tea was the order of the evening. Ruby had apparently picked something up in her seven – as Weiss had learned, dazedly – years between Weiss’s now and her own now. It was prepared exactly according to her tastes, and did a remarkable job of soothing her worn nerves. When she tasted a hint of whisky in her second cup, she’d given Ruby a curious look, to which Ruby simply offered a knowing smile.

Now considerably calmer, Weiss was bemusedly talking with her future-wife(?) while her future-daughter(???) sat on her knee.

“I really am sorry for causing you so much stress, but Ariana really wanted to see you and this was the only wrong warp I could find that was easy enough for her to understand.”

“Wrong warp?” Weiss asked, and then immediately held her hand up. “Nevermind.”

Ruby laughed, a deep and rich sound that settled nicely in Weiss’s stomach. “Oh that never gets old. Can you believe that even seven years later, Blake or Yang will still occasionally do that? At this point I just use terms to try and trick them into it.”

“So…” Weiss prodded Ariana, causing the girl to squeal in delight. “You said in a way she understands. Does that mean she…?”

Ruby nodded. “She’s already showing signs of it.”

“I bet I’m  _ real _ thrilled about that.” Weiss said dryly.

A smirk crossed the woman’s lips. “Well, I’m sure the thought briefly crossed her mind, but she was too over-the-moon in love to really care much.”

A smile tugged at Weiss’s own mouth as she looked down at a beaming Ariana. “I can believe that.” She didn’t pay any mind to Ruby’s snickering. “I never thought to ask…well, you, until now, but what is it like? You started explaining it once, but then you just kinda stopped.”

Ruby gave her a searching look, before smiling. “Honestly, at this point I’ve almost lived with it half my life and it’s a bit hard to remember what it was like beforehand. When I first discovered it, I tried to kind of ignore it. It seemed so ridiculous, right? Dad was worried I was hallucinating, hell  _ I _ was worried I was hallucinating. But then I kinda learned everything about it. You know how I am, if I can figure out how something works I will.” At Weiss’s nod, she continued.

“By the time I got to Beacon proper, I knew just about everything there was to know about the system. Can you imagine that, Weiss? Knowing the boundaries of the world and knowing how to break them, how to accomplish almost anything in spite of thousands of years of knowledge to the contrary?”

“You must have felt like a god.” Weiss said quietly.

“A little, at first.” Ruby confirmed. “It was a heady feeling. But you all kept me grounded. And finally, I learned restraint.” She smirked. “Well, to some extent anyways.”

“I hope she learns just as well.” Weiss wrapped her arms around Ariana, prompting Ruby to chuckle.

“She’s a much better student than I ever was. Gets that from mommy. I think you don’t have to worry about that.”

“So no time travel visits from my daughter then? How disappoint-“

The door flew open again. “And this has to be where mom and mommy-“ An older woman, definitely of Schnee descent, with stunning silver eyes, burst in, apparently in the middle of a monologue to herself. She stopped cold when she saw the group assembled. “Mom…mommy…” She said, and then froze as two sets of eyes pierced her. “Uh, uh, I can explain!”

“I think,” Weiss said slowly, causing both Ruby and the older Ariana to flinch, “that I’m going to need to do some disciplining before this is all over.” Her eye twitched. “But please, dear.  _ Explain. _ ”

\---

A/N: And that’s that. This chapter is inspired by wrong-warping, another common glitch used to access incorrect locations from certain places. One of the most famous of these is Ocarina of Time wrong-warping, which allows Link to do things like teleport from Gohma’s portal to the castle collapse at the end of the game, or from King Dodongo’s lair into the credits proper. In particular, this glitch is used in longer categories to allow Adult Link to do Child Link dungeons, hence the time travel stuff.

The tone shift wasn’t entirely planned but I like it.

Thank you for accompany me through this silliness. I’ve got a big (biiiig) project that I’m preparing for and should have started writing at least like halfway through this story getting posted up. Much like this, it won’t be posted until everything is complete, but hopefully it won’t be a long wait.

I hope you enjoyed.


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